Mrs. Fausch, 59, was born in England. Her father, who would go on to be editor, chairman and chief executive officer of the St. Petersburg Times, was the London bureau manager for United Press. Her parents met in South Carolina; her mother, the former Mary Sue Carter, was a general assignment reporter and feature writer for the Columbia Record, and her father was Columbia bureau chief for United Press.

Mrs. Fausch grew up in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., graduated cum laude from Duke University and spent many years as a volunteer in her children's schools and as a caretaker for her parents.

Of her Atlanta years, where Gene Patterson won a Pulitzer Prize at the Constitution for his editorials supporting civil rights, he once wrote: "The child bore shattering slurs against her daddy that classmates brought from home. . . . She wept, but . . . stood stout for her family through that time now mercifully gone."

She and her husband, James Carr "Jay" Fausch of St. Petersburg, met as students at Duke. They lived in Clearwater during the 1990s before moving to Raleigh, N.C. He also has family ties to the Times; in 1914, his grandfather C.C. "Charlie" Carr moved to St. Petersburg from Indiana to become the newspaper's general manager.

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Fausch is survived by their daughters, Laura Fausch Price and Emily Carr Fausch, both of Raleigh, and Molly Patterson Fausch of Columbus, Ohio; and an aunt, Anne Facer of Homosassa Springs.

A memorial service will take place at 3 p.m. Wednesday at Anderson-McQueen Funeral Home, 2201 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N.